A man has been given a new lease of life after he was given a heart kept alive in a ‘box’ for eight hours.

Surgeons from the University Hospital of South Manchester are some of the first to use the pioneering technique, which allows a donated heart to be kept healthy outside the body prior to being transplanted.

Nicholas Egan, 61, of St Helens, underwent surgery at Wythenshawe Hospital using the technology earlier this year after being diagnosed with rare heart disease arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy.

The TransMedic Organ Care System (OCS), often referred to as the ‘heart in a box’, works by simulating conditions in the body when it is placed in the special container.

Oxygenated warm blood and medication is pumped through the donated heart after it is retrieved from the donor.

The transplant was carried out at Wythenshawe Hospital (Image: MEN)

In traditional heart transplants donor organs are placed in a cool-box and surrounded by ice to prevent deterioration, but the OCS box allows a donated heart can be kept outside the body for a maximum of eight hours.

Nicholas, a father-of-two, first suffered heart problems when he was 35.

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He said: “Most importantly I would like to say thank you very much to the donor and their family and I’d like to encourage everyone to please sign up to the NHS Organ Donor Register .

“I also have so much praise for the whole team at Wythenshawe Hospital, they have just been brilliant.

“My condition had left my whole universe shrinking so your world gets smaller.

Nicholas is urging people to sign up to the Organ Donor Register (Image: PA)

"You can still do things but you don’t have the same resource or stamina.”

Eventually, Nicholas would like to resume his former hobby of archery.

Mr Rajamiyer Venkateswaran, Director of Transplantation and Consultant Cardiac Surgeon, said: “We are really excited to have the Organ Care System machine at UHSM and we are delighted that we are only the third centre in the country to have it.

“Now that we have the Organ Care System, it could mean we could increase the heart transplant numbers by at least 20 per cent more as the machine allows us to use borderline hearts for transplantation.”

The OCS machine was funded by the New Start charity which donated £125,000 towards its cost.